Morris shook his head, and even indulged in the cheap provocation of slightly curling his lip.
“However that may be,” he said tolerantly, and disregarded Nina’s interpolated: “I’ve just told you how it is——” “However that may be, mother, if you really want to go down there, we could take the car to-morrow. It would be a really long run.”
He was quite aware that his mother had never for a moment seriously entertained the project of raiding the convent and obtaining an interview with Frances.
“I don’t know,” said Nina austerely. “I shall have to consider very carefully, Morris. It’s not the sort of undertaking that can be lightly rushed into.”
“Why not? The car is running beautifully just now.”
Nina gave him a glance of contemptuous rebuke. She could be flippant herself, but the flippancy of Morris caused her acute vexation.
“You are too inexperienced to know how extremely cautiously one may have to move in this sort of matter,” she said coldly. “People talk only too readily, and for the sake of poor little Frances, I don’t want gossip about her being kept at the convent against her will.”
“Considering she didn’t know a soul to speak of, and wasn’t even ‘come out’ before she went, I don’t think anyone is very likely to talk about her, I must say. Besides, no one is particularly likely to know whether you go down there or not, surely?” inquired Morris in tones of simplicity.
Few things, indeed, were better calculated to annoy the composer of the “Kismet” series than an assumption that her movements were left unchronicled and unregarded by the public eye. She now laughed with all the violent amusement so frequently simulated by intense fury.
“My dear, ridiculous boy! You’ve no idea how you make me laugh—if anybody could hear you! Do you really think that your little, stupid, childish innuendoes, which one can see through so easily, can touch me—an experienced woman of the world?”